Finding Success and Happiness

It was my third year teaching at Farragut High School in Knoxville when I first began to think about a job creating joy in my life. My husband, Gary, and I were teaching at the same high school and taught many of the same students. They would take Economics from him one semester and then enter my world of Business Law the next. "If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there" was always on the board when they came into the room on day one. I still keep in touch with some of my students through Facebook, and it is heartwarming when they tell me they enjoyed my classes. I regularly read Time, News Week and USA Today to keep up to date so that we could have heated discussions in class. We had a law team that competed with other schools in mock trials. They have no idea how much I enjoyed that time in my life. It was fun for me and I tried to make learning fun for them.

The last week of class every semester was spent learning about ethics in the business world and about how to choose a career(geared of course toward the business world) and on the bulletin board was a quote from Catherine Graham of the Washington Post that I still use today when I do presentations to Realtors. The quotation would always bring out a variety of attitudes they had already formed through their 17 or 18 years of life. The quote was, "To love what you do and feel that it matters...what could be more fun!" Some of the students disagreed with her thinking and mine. One student asked how Gary and I could enjoy teaching when we made so little money? "I couldn't live on what you make," he said. At that time I was in my twenties and, frankly, I'm not sure I understood why it was so important to me to have a job I enjoyed and not just a paycheck.

Over time I began to believe that that student may have been right and maybe we couldn't raise two children and send them to college on the income we were making. So I did leave that profession that I so enjoyed. I still believe strongly that whatever work you are doing should be fun as well as fulfilling.

I wish I could find that student and tell him how I felt when I received my first commission check in real estate that was more than I made in a year teaching. Looking at that check, which was $1,500 more than I made per year my last year of teaching, created a lot of emotion. One of the reasons I left education to go into real estate was for the money, but yet, I strongly felt the inequity. I did work hard for that commission and still do for every family, but it's nowhere near as important as teaching 150 high school students for a year.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, was on the bestsellers list for several weeks this year. Too bad I didn't have some of his quotes and the studies he uses to share with my high school students all those years ago. My favorite is, "It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine to five. It's whether our work fulfills us." Gladwell says there are three things that you must have to be happy in your work: autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward. Teachers certainly have autonomy, and teaching a variety of subjects using a variety of activities to try to hold their interest, and dealing with all those multitudes of personality types makes teaching very complex. And teaching provides one with an immediate and measureable connection between efforts and the rewards. If you aren't successful, you know it immediately. Teenagers do not respond well if they aren't being challenged and they aren't learning. I don't know what it's like today, but back when I was teaching, the teachers who had discipline problems were always the ones who weren't accomplishing anything.

After teaching for 13 years, I was promoted to educational administration. There I learned that I only enjoy working when I have a direct impact and can see and feel that I make a difference. And once, for a three year period I managed a large real estate office. While I seemed to have Gladwell's three components for happiness at work, autonomy, complexity and rewards for my efforts, something was missing. The agents I worked with were very bright and a lot of fun. While I have fond memories about the folks I worked with during that period, I really wasn't happy. I worried constantly about each individual agent's problems. That was my fault, not theirs. Not one of them ever asked me to carry their problems home with me every night. And I think that's when I learned that life has to have balance.

Whatever the job title, I do think one's job has to provide more than monetary rewards. If my clients didn't like me and I didn't find it fun to work with them, I'm not sure I could do my job effectively. I reached the point in my career years ago where I could be more selective with whom I work. And speaking of fun...I try to remind myself to laugh a lot. Smiling and laughter are very contageous.

I suppose what I have learned during my 45 years of work is that success for me means a sense of accomplishment, making a difference, and having fun. And, that success does help create happiness! What about you? Are you finding happiness from nine to five? If not, it's never too late to try something new.